


The Grandmother's Curse

by hearts_0f_kyber (rw_eaden)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Adopted Children, Background Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, F/M, Family Dynamics, Gen, Grandparent Leia Organa, Leia lives a long and happy life and gets to see her grandkids dammit, Multigenerational Familial Relationships, New Jedi Order Implied, POV Leia Organa, Parent Ben Solo, Parent Rey (Star Wars), Parent-Child Relationship, Post-Canon, Skywalker Family Feels, This Fic is All About Parents and Children, way too much world building for such a short fic tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 17:31:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18782872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rw_eaden/pseuds/hearts_0f_kyber
Summary: When she said it, Leia meant it mostly in jest.“One day you’re going to have a child who’s exactly like you. Remember that, and know they’ll be ten times what you were.”She couldn't've known. Not back then. Not before everything.Now, though, the question is two-fold. Which of the Solo children will be most like their father, and will that be a good thing or a bad thing?





	The Grandmother's Curse

**Author's Note:**

> Imma be honest here, this fic is heavy on OCs. Like, *really* heavy. This fic is all about parent-child relationships though most of them focus on Leia and Ben and Ben and his kids. (There is a bit with Leia and Rey, Rey and her kids, and Leia and her grandkids, though.) There isn't a lot of Rey/Ben in this fic and most of it is just implied (though if you have five kids with someone I'd say that implies a hell of a lot). 
> 
> Anyway. If you're interested in reading about how I imagine a happy future for Leia and Ben and Rey and their gaggle of children, this might be a good fic for you.

When she said it, Leia meant it mostly in jest. 

It was a long time ago, back before the worst of it, when Han was still around regularly and her tiny baby boy had grown into a lanky young teenager. It was one of the easier days, though Leia can’t remember what time of year it was or even what planet they were on. But she does remember that spirits were high and Ben’s dry wit was on full display. He’d popped off at something she’d said - she doesn’t remember what - and Han doubled over on himself, laughing until there were tears in his eyes. Whatever it was, it was too amusing to get mad at, even if it had been a little snarky. Still, that pleased little smirk on Ben's face couldn’t go unchallenged. 

So she looked her son in the eyes and said: “One day you’re going to have a child who’s exactly like you. Remember that, and know they’ll be ten times what you were.” 

A Grandmother’s Curse. That’s what he aunt called it, years ago, after her own mother said the same thing. “One day, you’ll have a child whose ten times as stubborn as you are,” is what she’d said. And she was right. 

Now, as Leia looks down at her newborn grandkids, a boy and a girl, she hopes she’d been wrong. 

* * *

 

Skyler is the oldest. The sandy blonde hair he’s born with never changes, but his eyes do darken to a molted hazel-green. He’s a fussy baby. He doesn’t sleep well for the first few months, and neither does anyone else in the house. Ben and Rey don’t have to say it; Leia already knows what they’re worried about. To be honest, she is too. He cries, endlessly it seems, and nothing they do seems to soothe him. 

Colic, the doctor calls it. Not uncommon in human babies and not life-threatening, just exhausting. Ben paces the floor at night, with or without his son in his arms, long after Leia and Rey have tried to get him to bed. Rey winds up knocking him out with the force more than once if only to keep him from driving everyone else crazy. It works with him, but not with Skyler. If he’s put out he’ll only scream louder when he wakes. They start to take shifts; one of them sleeping while the other two care for the twins. Ben tries to apologize more than once but Leia won’t have it. 

“I wish I’d had my mother to help when you were little,” she’d said. “Besides, what else am I gonna do? I don’t have the patience to learn to knit.” 

Maybe if she’d had her mother, or her father, or anyone with baby experience they could’ve seen the warning signs sooner. They could’ve told her sooner that a child who can’t sleep isn’t normal. Maybe they could’ve seen through the fog that had been laid over her senses. Leia hopes she can be that now, if necessary, though she hopes desperately that it won’t be. 

Finally, nine months after he’s born, Skyler sleeps through the night for a week straight. 

As a toddler, he’s extraordinarily friendly and causes a fair share of heart attacks simply by wandering off to talk to neighbors. He grows more charming the older he gets, though he curtails his wandering (possibly because they move to a much more sparsely populated planet). His crooked smile and soft manner of speaking make him the target of the affection of many of the young ladies who come to the temple, but Leia knows by the way he stumbles over his own tongue around the tholorian boy who sells fruit in the market that none of them stand a chance. 

He’s still prone to tears, though by the time he’s a young man he’s much more even keel. But he refuses to hide the fact that he feels with his whole being. He smiles wide, laughs loud, and cries hard. Above all, he is earnest in everything he does. 

* * *

 

Pavarti comes home to them at four years old. She’s a togruta with skin the color of a Tatooine sunset, uneven white markings under her violet eyes, and lekku just a shade too big for her tiny body. She is quiet, though her presence does not go unnoticed. For a time, she clings to Rey’s leg, or Ben’s if she’s unavailable. By the time she turns five, she’s decided that Leia and her siblings are alright too, so she sticks to whoever’s closest when they go out. 

She’s never overbearing, even as a child intent on hiding from strangers. She doesn’t speak often, but she listens well. She’s an easy child, but her desire to please others is often taken advantage of by older children. She struggles with speaking up for herself throughout her teenage years, and though she has a better grasp on it by the time she’s an adult it’s not easy for her. She’s a gentle soul, easily affected by the feelings of others. 

Perhaps that’s why Leia will often find her, sitting under the stars late at night, sometimes with her siblings, sometimes with other students, just talking. Well, Pavarti doesn’t talk much, mostly she listens. Leia’s father once said to her that in order to truly listen to someone, you had to hear what was being said in between the words. Pavarti is good at hearing the words between words. When she does speak, however, it’s like the whole world falls silent to catch the soft lilt of her voice. Rey had once compared it to a magic spell and said that if Pavarti only asked, the sun would stop setting to please her. Leia can’t say that she disagrees. 

But rather than enchant the world with her voice, Pavarti shares her spirit through her art. She paints whatever she can get a brush to, and with an intensity it scarcely seems she should poses. The murals in the temple that illustrate the history of the Jedi, from enlightenment to war to destruction and rebirth, were created by her hand. From the serenity to the violence, every brush stroke radiates the soul of the painter, a soul that, while loving, knows more than it’s share of loss. 

* * *

 

Ariel comes to them with a heavy heart and fire in his blood. He is human, mostly, though the teal color of his hair and green undertones of his dark skin betray a mixed heritage he cannot name. His adjustment period is torturous. 

Rey sees herself in Ariel. She sees herself in every lost child, but especially her son. After the war, there were many broken families and others that created new ones, often without completely meaning to. Victory babies, they were called. Ben had been one, as were most adults born in wake of the fall of the Empire. Ariel, Leia suspects, is one, too. And, whoever brought him into the world hadn’t been interested in taking care of him. Unfortunately, neither had the families who’d attempted to take him in before now. 

It takes weeks for Ariel to feel comfortable enough to play with his siblings and even longer to leave his own things out instead of stacking them in a pile by his bed before he sleeps every night. He still guards his toys jealously and has more trouble with the concept of sharing than the others did. He fights and screams until he’s red in the face and the furniture in the room trembles, then he hides in the bedroom until someone coaxes him out. Sometimes he comes out after a few minutes, sometimes it’s hours. Sometimes he’ll come on his own, sometimes he needs to be talked to. None of them know whether it’s better to leave him be or insist on staying in the room. Leia isn’t sure it’s always one or the other. 

“If I ever find who did this, I’m not sure I’ll be able to control myself,” Rey says, one time Ariel spends all day under the bed. It’s dark now, and Ben’s reading the kids to sleep while Leia and Rey sit in the kitchen.

“I don’t think anyone would blame you. You’re a mother,” Leia says. Her stomach twists, thinking back to when her own child was losing control of himself. Shame rolls through her, as she thinks back to the times Ben’s temper manifested in the destruction of glassware and pottery and other meaningless crap she’d been so mad about at the time. A part of her knows that it was inevitable, that as sure as the suns rose and set, the Force had chosen her family, and whatever was fated to be had to be. Another part of her thinks it’s bullshit and wishes she could go back and shake her younger self.

Shame, it turns out, is what motivates Ariel to hide is force sensitivity. Or, he tries to hide it. Between five other force sensitives and the accidental telekinesis, it wasn’t difficult to figure out. Still, it’s why, when he accidentally flings his sister across the grass when startled, he hides in the trees. 

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Ben tells his son once he finally climbs out of a tall tree. “There’s nothing wrong with you. Nothing that makes you special is something to be ashamed of.” Tears race down his face when he speaks, rocking side to side slightly, as the little boy clings to him. 

Ariel is timid with his abilities. He reads the translation notes Ben keeps and meditates with Rey, but as he reaches his teen years he’s still hesitant. Leia can only hope that age will bring confidence. 

* * *

 

Kai is a surprise. The other four children are all in double digits and Ben’s hair is turning grey when Rey announces that she’s pregnant again. It’s not a great time to start from scratch with a baby, but then again when is? He’s welcomed into the world with boundless love and endless fascination from his siblings, all of whom are eager to play with and hold him, but disappear when spits up or needs changing. He looks like his mother everywhere but his lips and the dark beauty marks on his face and neck. 

By the time Kai can talk it’s clear what he’s going to be. He’s not shy about his opinions or his needs, and his brain-to-mouth filter is somehow more absent than it is with most children. Most nights, when the weather is clear, he’s staring out the window and up at the stars, and Leia knows there’s no keeping him on the ground. He has no fear as it is, diving headfirst into water he has no sense of depth or temperature for, climbing trees that shouldn’t be able to support his weight, catching snakes and trying to hand them out as presents. He’s all skinned knees, bright eyes, and fiery determination. 

He’s not force sensitive, as far as anyone can tell. There is still time to find out, but even if he doesn’t have it there would be a place for him among the Jedi like there is for Pavarti and the other students who can’t lift rocks but want to learn the ways of the force. But Leia has a feeling that Kai won’t want to be anywhere but the stars. 

The first time he’s old enough to go into space he giggles and shrieks the entire way into the atmosphere and back down. Leia eyes her own son when she notices the golden dice hanging from the top of Kai’s first flight simulator, and they share a conspiratorial smile. 

* * *

 

In hindsight, it should have been obvious. 

Skyler feels everything so intensely. Pavarti is artistic and attentive. Ariel struggles with accepting himself. Kai yearns to taste the freedom of the stars. All of Ben’s children are at least a little like him. All but one. 

Hannah is the oldest girl, born nine minutes after Skyler. At nineteen, she is shorter than her mother and just taller than Leia. She will be the smallest of her siblings when they’re all fully grown. She keeps her dark hair cut short, never long enough to touch her shoulders, but Leia has seen the start of an Alderannian braid - the one for eldest daughters of noble houses - tucked behind her ear once or twice. 

She has her father’s eyes and all the fire that entails. 

She is quiet, though not the peaceful kind of her sister. While Pavarti can be happy simply being, Hannah is in perpetual motion inside, always chasing thoughts and following ideas, figuring other people out before they even know she’s doing it. Like Skyler, she feels everything intensely, though much more explosively. Her frustration comes out in violent screams, her hurt in body-wracking sobs, her joy is shrieks and kisses. She is a firework; big, loud, and impressive. 

Like Kai, she hungers, though hers is for more. She wants strongly, desperately, constantly, but for what she doesn’t know. She is a perfectionist, raging against herself when she fails to meet her own standards and secret rule. Like Ariel, there’s a sense that she doesn’t feel quite right. There is an anxiety to her, a jitter in her force signature that she never talks about. Leia hopes she's only restless. Hannah has a warrior’s spirit in a world where all the great battles have already been fought. There is no more for her, no matter how she hungers. No more unless she falls. 

Of all her grandchildren, it’s Hannah Leia worries about the most. Everyone has a dark side, but Hannah’s is always there, boiling just under the surface. It's in her habit of knocking things over when frustrated, in the way she relishes fighting, in her need to be better, faster, smarter than her peers. Leia can’t help the anxiety it gives her. What would it take to push her over the edge? Could she be tempted with knowledge? Power? Purpose? 

All of the children, save for Kai because he's still too young to really understand, know about Kylo Ren. Hannah took it the hardest. While the other kids asked questions and tried to understand, Hannah stayed silent. Leia had tried to reach out, remembering what it was like to realize, to really realize, that her birth father had been Darth Vader. But Leia had only come to accept that, to accept that he had been a man before he was a monster after Ben came home. She couldn't imagine what it would be like to know the man you idolized, loved, wanted to be just like, killed the man he named you after. 

After a few days of silence, Hannah sat down next to her father in the temple, pillowing her head on his arm and asked just one question: 

"Would you still love me if I did something bad like that?" 

"With everything I have," Ben has said. 

Leia prays it's just the question of a child who needs reassurance, but the intensity in her granddaughter's voice is frightening.

But for all her intensity, she has good qualities as well. She’s studious and clever, with dry wit and a sharp tongue. She doesn’t lie, even if it would be easier. She’s a skilled fighter but keeps her rivals in high regard (very high regard if the heated looks between her usual sparring partner and herself are any indication). She is her father’s daughter, through and through. 

Which is why, when she vanishes in the middle of the night sometime after her nineteenth birthday, they shouldn’t be surprised. 

They worry, but of course, they do. They go back and forth for days about whether or not they should go after her. They question where and why she would even go. They make plans and then trash them. Ultimately, they choose to trust her. She has always teetered on the razor’s edge of darkness, but nothing would push her over the edge faster than trying to force her into anything. She’s too defiant. Like her father. Like Leia. 

They don’t hear from her for four years, and when they finally do, it’s in the middle of a storm. 

It’s pouring rain, the sky crackling with thunder and lightning when Hannah appears in like a ghost in the yard outside the house. She looks much older than twenty-three now, though that could be the way the shadows play across her face. It’s hard to tell if the gaunt lines of her face and ashen color of her skin are due to the rain or whatever it is that she’s been doing. Her eyes, though, are dark and weary even from a distance. 

Ben is the first outside, telling the rest to wait. Leia watches from the window. Hannah won’t look at her father, instead staring down at her clasped hands. The frayed cloak around her shoulders whips in the wind, beating her legs and reaching for Ben like the fingers of ghosts. They’re talking, but the rain steals their words before Leia can hear them. 

Hannah drops something in the grass. It’s a bag that had been slung over her shoulder, under the cloak. Lightning strikes somewhere close, whiting out the world long enough that when Leia is able to look back at the scene without spots dancing in her vision, things have shifted. Hannah has something in her hand, though it’s hard to tell exactly what it is. 

Leia’s stomach twists as she feels it - the sick, heavy weight that floods the air; the Darkside. Everyone else in the house starts to feel it, too, even Kai, now eight, who asks why everyone is so upset and what they’re all looking at. Leia keeps him away from the window, but no one answers. No one breathes. 

Leia catches Rey’s eyes where she stands, hand on the door handle. She can see it, the moment they both make the connection. 

It’s been thirty years since Han’s death. 

Leia watches, heart in her throat, as Ben reaches for his daughter. Thunder booms and someone nearly screams. And then - 

And then, Hannah crashes right into her father, hard enough that he stumbles back a step. His arms are around her, her face is buried in his chest, and her sobs are finally audible over the slowing rain. 

Everyone breathes again. 

The Holocron, the Sith Holocron, Leia later learns, that had been in Hannah’s hand now lays discarded on the grass. Later, Hannah will explain. She’ll tell them she’d been looking for knowledge, something lost to time and had been exploring Jedi temples and conning artifacts dealers to get it. Of course, artifacts of the force are powerful, hungry things, that seek to influence whoever holds them. The Sith artifacts, in particular, love to prey on the deepest fears and anxieties of their holders. 

After nearly a year of holding onto the Holocron, Hannah had finally become convinced that her fate was dark and inevitable. The Holocron whispered her worst doubts and plagued her dreams with visions of slaughter. She would be the one in the family destined to fall to the Darkside, to follow the footsteps of the father she’d idolized since childhood. That she was too much Kylo Ren and too little Solo.

She hadn’t come to act on her fate. She’d come to apologize. She’d come to give them a chance to end it before it began. She’d come to tell them it was already too late. Neither she nor Ben will tell them what they’d said to each other in the rain.

Of all her grandchildren, Hannah is most like her father. Whether by Grandmother's Curse or fate or dumb luck she is just as clever and bookish and fierce and yes, even overly willing to believe the worst about herself as he is. But Ben, he’s like his father, too. If it came down to it, Leia knows Ben would lay down his life for her - for any of his children. But Leia also knows there's no way Hannah could ask that of him. No matter how wild the tempest inside, Hannah has a soft heart, too. They all do. 

And that, Leia realizes, is the key. A soft heart, a warm embrace, a patient ear, those are what makes the difference between a curse and a blessing. 

**Author's Note:**

> Please comment and leave kudos if you liked it, they feed my writer's soul. 
> 
> Find me on tumblr @rosemoonweaver.


End file.
